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CHAPTER ONE
TRIS
I PACE IN our cell in Erudite headquarters, her words echoing in my mind: My name will be
Edith Prior, and there is much I am happy to forget.
"So you've never seen her before? Not even in pictures?"

Christina says, her wounded leg
propped up on a pillow. She was shot during our desperate attempt to reveal the Edith Prior video to
our city. At the time we had no idea what it would say, or that it would shatter the foundation we
stand on, the factions, our identities. "Is she a grandmother or an aunt or something?"
"I told you, no," I say, turning when I reach the wall. "Prior is—was—my father's name, so it
would have to be on his side of the family. But Edith is an Abnegation name, and my father's relatives
must have been Erudite, so . . ."

"So she must be older," Cara says, leaning her head against the wall. From this angle she
looks just like her brother, Will, my friend, the one I shot. Then she straightens, and the ghost of him is
gone. "A few generations back. An ancestor."
"Ancestor." The word feels old inside me, like crumbling brick. I touch one wall of the cell as
I turn around. The panel is cold and white.
My ancestor, and this is the inheritance she passed to me: freedom from the factions, and the
knowledge that my Divergent identity is more important than I could have known. My existence is a
signal that we need to leave this city and offer our help to whoever is outside it.
"I want to know," Cara says, running her hand over her face. "I need to know how long we've
been here. Would you stop pacing for one minute?"
I stop in the middle of the cell and
raise my eyebrows at her.
"Sorry," she mumbles.
"It's okay," Christina says. "We've been in here way too long."
It's been days since Evelyn mastered the chaos in the lobby of Erudite headquarters with a few
short commands and had all the prisoners hustled away to cells on the third floor. A factionless
woman came to doctor our wounds and distribute painkillers, and we've eaten and showered several
times, but no one has told us what's going on outside. No matter how forcefully I've asked them.
"I thought Tobias would come by now," I say, dropping to the edge of my cot. "Where is he?"
"Maybe he's still angry that you lied to him and went behind his back to work with his father,"
Cara says.
I glare at her.
"Four wouldn't be that petty," Christina says, either to chastise Cara or to reassure me, I'm not
sure. "Something's probably going on that's keeping him away. He told you to trust him."
In the chaos, when everyone was shouting and the factionless were trying to push us toward
the staircase, I curled my fingers in the hem of his shirt so I wouldn't lose him. He took my wrists in
his hands and pushed me away, and those were the words he said. Trust me. Go where they tell you.
"I'm trying," I say, and it's true. I'm trying to trust him. But every part of me, every fiber and
every nerve, is straining toward freedom, not just from this cell but from the prison of the city beyond
it.
I need to see what's outside the fence.
CHAPTER
I CAN'T WALK these hallways without remembering the days I spent as a prisoner here,
barefoot, pain pulsing
TWO
TOBIAS
inside me every time I moved. And with that memory is another one, one of waiting for Beatrice
Prior to go to her death, of my fists against the door, of her legs slung across Peter's arms when he
told me she was just drugged.
I hate this place.
It isn't as clean as it was when it was the Erudite compound; now it is ravaged by war, bullet
holes in the walls and the broken glass of shattered lightbulbs everywhere. I walk over dirty
footprints and beneath flickering lights to her cell and I am admitted without question, because I bear
the factionless symbol—an empty circle—on a black band around my arm and Evelyn's features on
my face. Tobias Eaton was a shameful name, and now it is a powerful one.
Tris crouches on the ground inside, shoulder to shoulder with Christina and diagonal from
Cara. My Tris should look pale and small—she is pale and small, after all—but instead the room is
full of her.
Her round eyes find mine and she is on her feet, her arms wound tightly around my waist and
her face against my chest.
I squeeze her shoulder with one hand and run my other hand over her hair, still surprised when
her hair stops above her neck instead of below it. I was happy when she cut it, because it was hair for
a warrior and not a girl, and I knew that was what she would need.
"How'd you get in?" she says in her low, clear voice.
"I'm Tobias Eaton," I say, and she laughs.
"Right. I keep forgetting." She pulls away just far enough to look at me. There is a wavering
expression in her eyes, like she is a heap of leaves about to be scattered by the wind. "What's
happening? What took you so long?"
She sounds desperate, pleading. For all the horrible memories this place carries for me, it
carries more for her, the walk to her execution, her brother's betrayal, the fear serum. I have to get her
out.
Cara looks up with interest. I feel uncomfortable, like I have shifted in my skin and it doesn't
quite fit anymore. I hate having an audience.
"Evelyn has the city under lockdown," I say. "No one goes a step in any direction without her
say-so. A few days ago she gave a speech about uniting against our oppressors, the people outside."
"Oppressors?" Christina says. She takes a vial from her pocket and dumps the contents into
her mouth—painkillers for the bullet wound in her leg, I assume.
I slide my hands into my pockets. "Evelyn—and a lot of people, actually —think we shouldn't
leave the city just to help a bunch of people who shoved us in here so they could use us later. They
want to try to heal the city and solve our own problems instead of leaving to solve other people's. I'm
paraphrasing, of course," I say. "I suspect that opinion is very convenient for my mother, because as
long as we're all contained, she's in charge. The second we leave, she loses her hold."
"Great." Tris rolls her eyes. "Of course she would choose the most selfish route possible."
"She has a point." Christina wraps her fingers around the vial. "I'm not saying I don't want to
leave the city and see what's out there, but we've got enough going on here. How are we supposed to
help a bunch of people we've never met?"
Tris considers this, chewing on the inside of her cheek. "I don't know," she admits.
My watch reads three o'clock. I've been here too long—long enough to make Evelyn
suspicious. I told her I came to break things off with Tris, that it wouldn't take much time. I'm not sure
she believed me.
I say, "Listen, I mostly came to warn you—they're starting the trials for all the prisoners.
They're going to put you all under truth serum, and if it works, you'll be convicted as traitors. I think
we would all like to avoid that."
"Convicted as traitors?" Tris scowls. "How is revealing the truth to our entire city an act of
betrayal?"
"It was an act of defiance against your leaders," I say. "Evelyn and her followers don't want to
leave the city. They won't thank you for showing that video."
"They're just like Jeanine!" She makes a fitful gesture, like she wants to hit something but
there's nothing available. "Ready to do anything to stifle the truth, and for what? To be kings of their
tiny little world? It's ridiculous."
I don't want to say so, but part of me agrees with my mother. I don't owe the people outside
this city anything, whether I am Divergent or not. I'm not sure I want to offer myself to them to solve
humanity's problems, whatever that means.
But I do want to leave, in the desperate way that an animal wants to escape a trap. Wild and
rabid. Ready to gnaw through bone.
"Be that as it may," I say carefully, "if the truth serum works on you, you will be convicted."
"If it works?" says Cara, narrowing her eyes.
"Divergent," Tris says to her, pointing at her own head. "Remember?"
"That's fascinating." Cara tucks a stray hair back into the knot just above her neck. "But
atypical. In my experience, most Divergent can't resist the truth serum. I wonder why you can."
"You and every other Erudite who ever stuck a needle in me," Tris snaps.
"Can we focus, please? I would like
to avoid having to break you out of prison," I say. Suddenly desperate for comfort, I reach for
Tris's hand, and she brings her fingers up to meet mine. We are not people who touch each other
carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.
"All right, all right," she says, gently now. "What did you have in mind?"
"I'll get Evelyn to let you testify first, of the three of you," I say. "All you have to do is come
up with a lie that will exonerate both Christina and Cara, and then tell it under truth serum."
"What kind of lie would do that?"
"I thought I would leave that to you," I say. "Since you're the better liar."
I know as I'm saying the words that they hit a sore spot in both of us. She lied to me so many
times. She promised me she wouldn't go to her death in the Erudite compound when Jeanine
demanded the sacrifice of a Divergent, and then she did it anyway. She told me she would stay home
during the Erudite attack, and then I found her in Erudite headquarters, working with my father. I
understand why she did all those things, but that doesn't mean we aren't still broken.
"Yeah." She looks at her shoes. "Okay, I'll think of something."
I set my hand on her arm. "I'll talk to Evelyn about your trial. I'll try to make
it soon."
"Thank you."
I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind.
It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a
sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch
together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles
on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open
skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.
"If you're going to kiss, do me a favor and tell me so I can look away," says Christina.
"We are," Tris says. And we do.
I touch her cheek to slow the kiss down, holding her mouth on mine so I can feel every place
where our lips touch and every place where they pull away. I savor the air we share in the second
afterward and the slip of her nose across mine. I think of something to say, but it is too intimate, so I
swallow it. A moment later I decide I don't care.
"I wish we were alone," I say as I back out of the cell.
She smiles. "I almost always wish that."
As I shut the door, I see Christina pretending to vomit, and Cara laughing, and Tris's hands
hanging at her sides.
CHAPTER THREE
TRIS
"I THINK YOU'RE all idiots." My hands are curled in my lap like a sleeping child's. My body is
heavy with truth serum. Sweat collects on my eyelids. "You should be thanking me, not questioning
me."
"We should thank you for defying the instructions of your faction leaders? Thank you for trying
to prevent one of your faction leaders from killing Jeanine Matthews? You behaved like a traitor."
Evelyn Johnson spits the word like a snake. We are in the conference room in Erudite headquarters,
where the trials have been taking place. I have now been a prisoner for at least a week.
I see Tobias, half-hidden in the shadows behind his mother. He has kept his eyes averted
since I sat in the chair and they cut the strip of plastic binding my wrists together. For just for a
moment, his eyes touch mine, and I know it's time to start lying.
It's easier now that I know I can do it. As easy as pushing the weight of the truth serum aside
in my mind.
"I am not a traitor," I say. "At the
time I believed that Marcus was working under Dauntless-factionless orders. Since I couldn't
join the fight as a soldier, I was happy to help with something else."
"Why couldn't you be a soldier?" Fluorescent light glows behind Evelyn's hair. I can't see her
face, and I can't focus on anything for more than a second before the truth serum threatens to pull me
down again.
"Because." I bite my lip, as if trying to stop the words from rushing out. I don't know when I
became so good at acting, but I guess it's not that different from lying, which I have always had a
talent for. "Because I couldn't hold a gun, okay? Not after shooting . . . him. My friend Will. I couldn't
hold a gun without panicking."
Evelyn's eyes pinch tighter. I suspect that even in the softest parts of her, there is no sympathy
for me.
"So Marcus told you he was working under my orders," she says, "and even knowing what
you do about his rather tense relationship with both the Dauntless and the factionless, you believed
him?"
"Yes."
"I can see why you didn't choose Erudite." She laughs.
My cheeks tingle. I would like to slap her, as I'm sure many of the people in this room would,
though they wouldn't dare to admit it. Evelyn has us all trapped in the city, controlled by armed
factionless patrolling the streets. She knows that whoever holds the guns holds the power. And with
Jeanine Matthews dead, there is no one left to challenge her for it.
From one tyrant to another. That is the world we know, now.
"Why didn't you tell anyone about this?" she says.
"I didn't want to have to admit to any weakness," I say. "And I didn't want Four to know I was
working with his father. I knew he wouldn't like it." I feel new words rising in my throat, prompted by
the truth serum. "I brought you the truth about our city and the reason we are in it. If you aren't thanking
me for it, you should at least do something about it instead of sitting here on this mess you made,
pretending it's a throne!"
Evelyn's mocking smile twists like she has just tasted something unpleasant. She leans in close
to my face, and I see for the first time how old she is; I see the lines that frame her eyes and mouth,
and the unhealthy pallor she wears from years of eating far too little. Still, she is handsome like her
son. Near-starvation could not take that.
"I am doing something about it. I am making a new world," she says, and her voice gets even
quieter, so that I can barely hear her. "I was Abnegation. I have known the truth far longer than you
have, Beatrice Prior. I don't know how you're getting away with this, but I promise you, you will not
have a place in my new world, especially not with my son."
I smile a little. I shouldn't, but it's harder to suppress gestures and expressions than words,
with this weight in my veins. She believes that Tobias belongs to her now. She doesn't know the truth,
that he belongs to himself.
Evelyn straightens, folding her arms.
"The truth serum has revealed that while you may be a fool, you are no traitor. This
interrogation is over. You may leave."
"What about my friends?" I say sluggishly. "Christina, Cara. They didn't do anything wrong
either."
"We will deal with them soon," Evelyn says.
I stand, though I'm weak and dizzy from the serum. The room is packed with people, shoulder
to shoulder, and I can't find the exit for a few long seconds, until someone takes my arm, a boy with
warm brown skin and a wide smile—Uriah. He guides me to the door. Everyone starts talking.
Uriah leads me down the hallway to the elevator bank. The elevator doors spring open when he
touches the button, and I follow him in, still not steady on my feet. When the doors close, I say, "You
don't think the part about the mess and the throne was too much?"
"No. She expects you to be hotheaded. She might have been suspicious if you hadn't been."
I feel like everything inside me is vibrating with energy, in anticipation of what is to come. I
am free. We're going to find a way out of the city. No more waiting, pacing a cell, demanding answers
that I won't get from the guards.
The guards did tell me a few things about the new factionless order this morning.